La balade d'Ivan

Somehow, when the closing credits start rolling, you have the feeling that absolutely nothing has happened in the 75 minutes of this curious film: you're simply back at square one, and all the questions that you had at the start stay totally unanswered. The pace is extremely slow, there's no narrative that you can put your finger on, even the few scenes with at least a tiny bit of action seem to be lost in the predominating vagueness.

We see a young guy Ivan (Aram Arakelyan), obviously from Russian descent, who wanders aimlessly through the streets of Paris and later through the woods of Vincennes. We hear his voice (in French) reminiscing of his early youth in Russia, his mother, his school, his friends. We never get to know since when he's in France, or for what purpose. Is he a foreign student? A fugitive? Apparently he's flat broke, we see him begging (rather listlessly) for some euro's. Why is he broke? Why doesn't this flawlessly French speaking, sturdy, clean and well-fed looking guy have a job, or why isn't he searching for one? And instead even stoops to assault and rob bystanders that mistake him for a male prostitute?

In the meantime we hear a voice-over recite parts from some philosophical text. We see a few other characters pass by, some sneering male escorts, a young girl who talks in riddles, an older woman who has wordless sex with him in a dilapidated monument in the woods. All this interspersed with - I have to admit - breathtakingly beautiful photography of the nature that surrounds Ivan. But for the rest? At best I would call it all enigmatic. But when putting it less mildly: tedious and pretentious. I give it 4 stars for the National Geographic visuals, and one extra for Ivan himself (Aram Arakelyan), whose handsome face and figure were the only reason that I kept watching.

The film skilfully steers us from sympathy for Ivan to realisation that he is a nasty piece of work. It does this while holding one's interest throughout during vignettes in Paris and the Bois de Vincennes.

We meet Ivan on the streets of the metropolis telling his story while panhandling for a euro or two. He is beautiful and his situation as a homeless foreigner shunned and abused by the locals evokes feelings of commiseration. As he gradually withdraws from the city to the woods and leads a near solitary existence we learn more and realise that he is not the angel-faced unfortunate we had imagined. He was a tearaway little yob who used to have fun gobbing on the heads of passers-by from a rooftop and who left school at fourteen to drink vodka with his mates.

His true self emerges in the woods and this culminates in a shocking act of violence. His tears and regrets are not for his victim(s) but for himself - he still steals the money.

Winter's approaching and he's on the move again in the rain. He tells some more about himself concluding with his real age. Are we meant to be shocked or sorry? I wasn't. He's a horrid little tyke.

The skill of the filmmakers was to hold the viewer through the 75 minutes of the screenplay.

Aram Arakelyan's age seems to be nowhere on the web. However I'm pretty sure he's older than the character he is playing. No matter as he kept it all together and us transfixed.